I don't know how to feel about this. Other than it feeling like the second slap in the face I got this week.

"You have helped us to understand local crime and police the area more effectively".

Er... really? Oh good! Lovey! Glad to have been of service, guys! Hurrah!

Presumably, because I took it upon myself to get pounded in the head so selflessly, they now know that the CCTV camera right where it happened wasn't working, so it can be fixed. And I'm sure they'll check there are DNA swabs in their kit next time, like there were supposed to be.

And now maybe they'll set up patrols along one of the two major roads into town, in the middle of the day, on the off-chance that some random mental might have a pop at some other poor bugger while they're sat in their car with their family.

Perhaps I could help in some other way? Maybe I could stand on some street corners wearing a sandwich board reading "Please mug me", or wander through one of the rougher parts of town blowing a vuvuzela at 4am.

Since I got attacked on Tuesday I've been pretty sanguine about what happened. The police, the NHS, were great on the day. I felt looked after and protected. It felt like they were going to do something, that they'd pull out all the stops. One of the police even described my attack as "vile", which I loved.

Plus, I've been blessed by the messages I've received. You've all been very sweet - far beyond what I feel I deserve. I don't think I've got any last emotional damage - I'm not scared to leave the house, or anything. I don't have PTSD, and I'm not wallowing in pity, and I've slept well.

Alright, I'm frustrated that I still can't see properly out of my right eye, and that I look as if someone has pranked me with a joke telescope. Frankly, I know full well that it could've been far worse.

But the letter makes me angry. It's the way it feels so dismissive. "Thank you for contacting us to report this crime". Actually, I never reported anything, because, y'know, some guy had just smashed me - probably twice, as I now remember it - in the head, and I had blood gushing out of my face holes, I was seeing stars, and had gone blind in my right eye.

"Rrrrrd lrrkttrrrr rperrrfd rrrrrrr crrrurm."

"I'm sorry, sir?"

"Oh, I do apologise. I had a litre of blood in my mouth. Yes, I'd like to report a crime."

"Is it a vile crime, sir?'

"Oh it is!"

"We'll be right over."

MY BEAUTY

NOT A TERRORISTI get that the police have more important cases on their books. I get that the guy who attacked me didn't shout "Allah Akbar" right before he smacked me one, so he can't be labelled a terrorist.

I wasn't stabbed, I wasn't raped, or shot, and I'm not a little kid, and I wasn't stomped on by Godzilla. I get that resources are limited. That the police are a thin blue line holding back a tide of loons and social chaos, and I'm always - contrary to popular trend - reluctant to criticise them.

But surely the random and brazen nature of the assault suggests that my attacker was someone who really ought to be off the streets? I don't want justice. I don't want revenge. I do want him locked up - preferably in a concrete tomb, and dropped off the side of an oil rig - for the safety of others.

And I do want answers.

Because, you see, he didn't look mental. He was well-dressed, he was listening to music on his headphones. He smashed me in the face and jogged off, casual as anything. My partner, who caught up to him - like the brave lunatic she is - said he didn't seem agitated, didn't seem obviously mad, or on something. In fact, he acted as if nothing had happened.

​It's baffling, and I do want to know why I've had to spend the last three days in bed, why I'm not on stage in Walsall today like I was meant to be, why I'm going to be on medication for two months, why I still can't see properly right now, and why Sanya remains teary and shaken-up by it.

I want to know what caused all that. What provoked that. I don't want to have received this swollen purple shiner for nothing. Matron.

BIG TOWN​I live in a fairly sizeable town on the fringes of London.

I don't believe that every CCTV camera was broken that day. We were on a main road that was packed with cars. He must've been picked up at some point by one of the cameras. They didn't even bother with one of those "AN INCIDENT OCCURRED HERE" signs, which appeal for witnesses. Missing cats get more than I did.

I mean, did I not make enough of a fuss? It wouldn't be the first time that not playing the victim pushed me to the back of the queue.

Or am I just expecting too much? I'm not the only person on the receiving end of a senseless, unsolvable crime. I'm know I'm not the parents of Madeline McCann.

​It's the world. Life is full of loose ends, I guess. I don't expect special treatment, and there's a certain inevitability to how this has gone, but that doesn't excuse my sense of impotence and disorientation. I dunno.

FAIR ENOUGH?But this is life, I suppose. It isn't always fair. It isn't always just, it isn't always secure.

Those of us who strive to live a good life, as good people, don't always win.

Psychotic fudgemothers - be they billionaire property tycoons, or wandering lunatics, or empathy-lacking, power-lusting, politicians - get their needs met from treading on the rest of us, the bedrock of society, who are just trying to get by and survive.

I simply wish I had something to say to the kids, who remain rattled. A reason I could give a 14 year old, and an 11 year old, and a 23 year-old with autism and a social anxiety disorder, why a stranger would suddenly come out of nowhere and attack their dad in front of them.

It wasn't for money. It wasn't over an argument, or because I cut him up in the car, or because of religion, or because - as far as I know - he didn't like the colour of my skin, or because my hair is slightly too long to be dignified for a man of my age.

It just happened. From their point of view, that's the world now. That's merely the risk you run from being alive, and stepping out of the front door. It isn't safe. It isn't ever going to be safe. And there's nothing you can do if it bites you; the powers that be don't have your back. They don't even have the resources or scope to have your back. Society is too mad, and sprawling, to hold together in such a way; all we have is each other. All of us. The bedrock.

I want to be able to explain it to myself too though. That's the main thing I'm left with after all this: a lack of answers. I won't wallow in it. I won't start with the self-pity, or play the victim. I want to know why, but I accept that I probably never will.

I simply have no choice but to accept that it's another of life's loose ends, that will forever be dangling in front of me.

​And they wonder why people dress up as bats and take justice into their own hands.

I had a similar experience in a restaurant about 10ys ago, Was belted about a dozen times in the face while another guy blocked my way out of the toilets. They'd been chatting to one of the tables and loads of other people watched them leave into a city centre full of cameras (one of which was used for evidence that a woman as eating an apple while driving!) No witnesses were questioned, no cameras were checked - my police station was a form filling formality. Obviously if I'd left the place without paying my bill PC Plod would have been knocking on my door the next morning.

As a teen growing up in North-east Scotland, I once got severely beaten up by a bunch of thugs for daring to come to their village barn dance and charm their women.

A knee to the face broke my nose and chipped several of my front teeth (I had braces at the time). I needed surgery for the nose, and my teeth rounded off over time (not as bad as it sounds).

Mercifully, I was well lubricated at the time, so it didn't hurt, and felt more like I was in a dream. I looked like a zombie for weeks after and learned some humility, though I wasn't scared after.

The point of this anecdote is that the police at the time didn't have evidence to charge anyone and suggested I seek compensation to the tune of about £2000, which would have been a lot of money for a teen.

I decided not to claim at the time as I reasoned the money would be better spent by the Police preventing crime or fighting crimes that could be solved.

To this day, I'm not sure whether my decision was naive, stupid, honourable or something else.

And did the shape of my once beautiful ski-slope nose being permanently changed to that of a fiercer. more angular version change the course of my life?

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Karavanpark

30/7/2016 11:42:17 am

(Police station visit)

Oh, and when my families' house was burgled as a kid (around the time when videos were about £500 and everyone was skint) we knew who did it and went to the station to ask the police to go to the bloke's house to see that our security-penned stuff was there. They didn't bother.

Thankfully the guy's legs mysteriously got broken some time later.

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Mr Biffo

30/7/2016 11:45:52 am

:-O

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Frank

30/7/2016 11:44:49 am

Look on the positive side Biffo, at least you can use this letter to get out of PE for a few weeks.

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Mr Biffo

30/7/2016 11:47:37 am

Funnily enough... I had a shitty cold and cough this week too. Like, a really bad one. Normally, I wouldn't feel that was sufficient excuse to down tools and stay in bed, but the beating/eye badness meant that my cold could by association absorb some of the sympathy that I'd normally feel too guilty to pander for.

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Spiney O'Sullivan

30/7/2016 11:53:08 am

That's profoundly disappointing. Maybe they'll catch him the next time he does the same thing since he got away with it so easily this time...

Have you given any thought to getting a dashcam, Biff? I know this is one of those, "I shouldn't have to do this, but the shitty world has called for it" moments, but at the very least it may make you feel like there was some sort of productive outcome at the end of it all.

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Dr Kank

30/7/2016 01:54:23 pm

Having worked in the civil service (although not the police force), to me the letter looks like a basic draft that's intentionally as vague and generic as possible. If you really want answers, submit a request under the freedom of information act for all information related to your case. They'll have to comply. Otherwise you could talk to your local MP and ask them to look into the situation and apply some pressure. That's probably the nuclear option if all else fails.

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patters

30/7/2016 02:30:53 pm

My brother once had his bike vandalised in a road rage incident while he was stopped at a junction. The altercation was in full view of a congestion charge camera and the guy made verbal promises to break his legs etc. He alerted the Metropolitan Police who told him that since he suffered no actual assault that they lacked the resources to take it any further. They literally could not be bothered to search for the video evidence at a precise known time, which would have provided the vehicle registration and a positive identification of the offender.

Now it does rather seem from their answer to him that they ought to be actively pursuing your attacker given the wounding you suffered. Especially since you know the time it happened and what the guy looks like, plus due to the random nature of it, he's absolutely a danger to society. Just what is it that the Police are saving all their precious 'resources' for?

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Keith

30/7/2016 02:34:17 pm

If you have the appetite for it, you can request CCTV footage (or your partner can from when she chased the guy) using this link; http://www.cctv.co.uk/how-to-request-cctv-footage-in-the-uk/

It might come to nothing, and I doubt you'd have much joy even if you took useful footage to the police, but I dunno, maybe you can catch a glimpse of the guy and at least kind of make your own judgement of what went on? And if nothing else, maybe get an idea of what he doesn't look like, in case you're a bit more wary than usual once you're back out and about again

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TekMerc

30/7/2016 02:42:26 pm

"merely the risk you run from being alive, and stepping out of the front door. It isn't safe. It isn't ever going to be safe. And there's nothing you can do if it bites you; the powers that be don't have your back. They don't even have the resources or scope to have your back. "

This is a lesson we all learn eventually. You cannot shield them from reality.

That letter reads like something you mail the paranoid old shut-in that keeps phoning about that strange man who keeps going in the house across the street-- never mind he bought it four months ago, he's strange to her.

Not, you know, something you'd get for having been literally attacked. It just feels patronizing and that's one thing that really pisses me off...

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Meatballs-me-branch-me-do

30/7/2016 04:09:28 pm

This is basically what happens, unfortunately.

When my then-girlfriend and I were kicked in by chavs, the police took photos of her bashed up face and then we got a letter saying there wasn't enough evidence to proceed - the CCTV only showed us walking past and the perpetrators following, and then the perpetrators running away, and it was from such a distance you couldn't identify anyone.

When another friend and I got attacked by a crackhead, the ambulance took us away saying we might be waiting a while for the cops. When I went to the police station to follow up, the cop told me it had been reported and that the cops in that area probably had a good idea who it was but there's not much we can do about random craxkheads, sir, you would need to go to court and then they'd just be released eventually and go back to their lair.

Tsk.

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Kendall9000

30/7/2016 06:28:08 pm

Reminds me of the police response to a break in at a shop run by a friend of mine. I'd gone round to offer her some moral support and help with the clean-up (the fuckers had wrecked the place), but we weren't even sure if we were meant to be touching things. There was blood on some broken glass - surely police forensics would want that for DNA or something? As if CSI:Wrexham were going to burst through the door and chew us out for contaminating their crime scene.

It took multiple phone calls (the police somehow lost all record of the incident the first time it was reported) before a police officer actually visited (over a week later). He took some details, and offered some advice on improving security, but there was no real interest in gathering evidence or looking at CCTV. He made it pretty clear that they weren't going to expend resources investigating a crime like that. Nobody had been punched in the face and it still left us a bit angry and disillusioned.

It'd be nice to think that a violent attack in front of witnesses would be taken a bit more seriously...

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Wadaload

30/7/2016 08:00:21 pm

But on the plus side, you get to make up some stories about how you got your wound:
-Pinched the Queen's bum while prince Phillip was watching
-Oculus rift: True-3D apple bobbing extreme accident
-Malfunctioning toaster

The list is endless.

Also, when it comes down to it; long hair or not, you've managed to avoid getting a random fist to the face for 30+ years (I assume) until now. I imagine that that wasn't because you were busy keeping your head down. Maybe that's worth focusing on too.

Nowadays, justice is meted out via social media. It's a shame that your attacker wasn't snapped or viddied and then this footage released on the social media. That's the only way you can fight this kind of thing today - then the police would have arrested him. Alas, the police don't seem that interested - unless you die.

My two experiences of the police are similarly lacklustre. The Missus had her car broken into and stuff stolen. Forensics turned up and fingerprinted ME so that they could ELIMINATE ME from the enquiry. But they didn't fingerprint The Missus whose prints would have definitely been all over the motor. Suffice to say, nothing happened...

My second experience involved a miscreant driving into my home at speed and destroying my home & business. We tried on a numerous attempts to get details about the criminal (who they arrested) but nothing was forthcoming. I didn't even get told when the trial was so I could give a victim statement. They were so cagey about this piece of shit, that they actually moved his trial at the eleventh hour so we couldn't attend (or at least that's how we felt).

The thing is that you are probably more likely to be attacked by the guy in the suit and tie than the dribbling tramp whose eating his own faeces.

Don't have nightmares!

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DancesWith Yaks

1/8/2016 12:46:21 pm

I guess the real question in all this is: If you helped the Police by being beaten up, does that make you a grass and thus deserving of being beaten up? And so on in an infinite loop?

Seriously, the modern police do an amazing job of self satire. I don't envy you trying to explain all this to your kids. Feel better soon.